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MSI Computer Corp. has unveiled its new line-up of notebooks, all-in-one devices and components powered by Intel's next generation Sandy Bridge Platform at CES.

The company has unveiled its line of G Series and F Series notebooks. The GT780, GT680, GE620 and GR620 all come powered by second generation Intel Core i7 quad core processors and feature USB 3.0 support.

The 17.3-inch GT780 and 15.6-inch GT680 offer advanced DirectX 11-ready nVidia GeForce GTX 500 Series and 400 Series graphics cards along with Dynaudio speakers. Both incorporate MSI's Turbo Drive Engine (TDE) technology, accelerated dual SSD storage and 4 SO-DIMM DDR3 memory slots allowing for up to 16GB memory.

The 15.6-inch GR620 and GE620 are designed for casual gamers, and feature nVidia GeForce GT Series discrete graphics cards. The GT680 ships in January with a base price of $1499.99 while the GT780 follows in Q2 for an undisclosed price. No release or pricing details are available for the GR620 or GE620.

At the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, Acer is showing off two notebooks featuring AMD Fusion processors.

At the heart of the Aspire 5253 and Aspire 4253 is the new AMD E-Series Accelerated Processing Unit (APU) and the VISION Engine from AMD, enabling stutter-free HD movies and HD Internet video streaming, enough processing power to handle even the most demanding applications, DirectX 11 capable graphics and extended battery life.

They come with Acer's Clear.fi network multimedia sharing system pre-installed. The 14-inch Aspire 4253 and 15.6-inch Aspire 5253 feature high-definition Acer CineCrystal LED backlit displays. The Aspire 5253 can come with up to 8GB DDR3 RAM and with large capacity hard drives depending on requirements.

Both feature 802.11a/b/g/n Wi-Fi support and optional Bluetooth 3.0. For online communication, they come equipped with a built-in Acer Crystal Eye high-definition webcam and microphone. These notebooks are available in three color options – Mesh Black, Mesh Brown, and Mesh Red – with palm rest in matching shade and finish, for a more appealing look.

Acer's announced ICONIA tablet device is being showcased at CES with Verizon Wireless, taking advantage of its 4G LTE network.

The ICONIA Tab A500 will come with the Android OS and Acer UI 4.5, and will feature the Clear.fi media sharing system preloaded to access, play and share multimedia across the home network and to instantly publish updates to social media networks.

It features a 10.1-inch high-resolution, high color contrast display and also features a HDMI port to output 1080p content to a HDTV. The ICONIA Tab A500 will be equipped with NVIDIA Tegra 2 dual core 1.0Ghz processor with Flash 10.1 support for optimized HD Web experience. For seamless communication, it also features the SkyCross antenna and ZTE LTE wireless module.

Verizon Wireless' 4G LTE network currently reaches about a third of all Americans and is planned to grow to the size of the carrier's 3G network, offering 10 times the speed.

"Innovation is in our DNA," said Campbell Kan, vice president of Acer's Smart Handheld BU. "We are proud to once again offer users the most advanced technologies. With the ICONIA Tab A500 supporting 4G LTE, users will be able to wirelessly navigate, download or stream as seamlessly as they do with a wired connection. This is indeed another step toward a truly mobile Internet experience."

The SD Association is detailing the new UHS-II bus-interface specification that will dramatically improve SD card speeds at CES.

The new UHS-II bus-interface specification bumps up SD bus-interface speeds up to 312 Megabytes per second. These transfer speeds give manufacturers the flexibility to develop new features and markets for mobile phones and other consumer electronics strengthened by the world-leading memory card standard.

"UHS-II increases SD performance and value and delivers immediate impact on manufacturer innovation and consumer creativity," said Norm Frentz, chairman of the SD Association. "We've tripled bus-interface speeds from last year's UHS-I development, and we plan to double UHS-II speeds in the future."

Tripled bus-interface speeds give manufacturers more flexible design options, including low voltage and low power consumption, for large and small SD devices without compromising data transfer rates. Since it is fully backwards compatible, devices supporting UHS bus interface will accept the billions of existing SD memory cards in the market today.

New high-speed interface signals are assigned on the second row of pins on UHS-II SDXC and SDHC memory cards. This new speed option will be available in full-size SDHC and SDXC memory cards and microSDHC and microSDXC form factors and does not change the physical size or shape of the cards.

At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Hitachi Global Storage Technologies announced two new HDD families to its line of drives for consumer electronics products.

The hard drives are intended for use with digital video recorders (DVR), IPTV set-top boxes, video surveillance systems and HDD-equipped televisions. The new CinemaStar 5K2000 family brings 2TB and 1.5TB capacities, and the 2.5-inch CinemaStar C5K750 family with 750GB, 640GB and 500GB capacities.

The drives are optimized for use in CE products, offering low power consumption, barely audible noise level and come fine-tuned for their host equipment's purposes (video content recording etc.).

The 2.5-inch CinemaStar C5K750 family contain 375GB per platter and feature Advanced Format (increasing the sector size on the HDD from 512 bytes to 4096 bytes). They operate at 0.5 watts (W) low power while idle, 1.5W power during read/write operations and are put out a barely audible 2.3 idle bels.

The 3.5-inch CinemaStar 5K2000 Family offer up to 2TB capacities (667GB per platter) and CoolSpin technology. The new CinemaStar 5K2000 drives are nearly silent at 2.4 bels during operation, draw only 4.2W or less idle power and generate less heat.

The 'professional' social networking site LinkedIn will go public this year, having already nearly selected its bank underwriters.

Bank Of America, JPMorgan Chase and Morgan Stanley are the current front-runners, say sources, via Reuters.

When asked for comment, a LinkedIn spokesman said: "An IPO is just one of many tactics that we could consider."

LinkedIn, Twitter and popular social gaming company Zynga have all considered IPOs (initial public offerings) for 2011, beating out social networking behemoth Facebook, which is expected to go public in 2012 (or at least begin disclosing their financials publicly).

The service is hoping to attract investors using its "reputation as one of the Web's fastest growing social network sites."

The NYTimes has reported that spam email volume fell by as much as 57 percent in December after a number of infamous botnets went dark and have yet to resume.

Beginning on Christmas Eve, the massive Rustock botnet "appears to have completely gone of the map and is yet to resume," says Matt Sergeant of Symantec. Sergeant is a senior anti-spam tecnologist.

The allegedly Russian-operated botnet accounts for just under 50 percent of the world's daily spam output.

Additionally, two smaller botnets known as Lethic and Xarvester stopped sending spam at around the same time.

"Did the people in charge of these botnets suddenly go on vacation? Currently there are no explanations on why these botnets stopped spamming," added Symantec.

Global spam volume fell to 30 billion emails a day from 70 billion before the botnets went dark. In August, spam hit its all-time high, at 200 billion messages a day, good for 92.2 percent of all email.

While it is still unclear why the botnets have stopped sending spam, the NYTimes speculates the owners may be scared after Russian authorities took down the massive spam ring SpamIt.com and recently arrested two other Russian spammers who had a database of 2 billion email addresses in the US and EU.

Today at the CES event, Motorola unveiled the Droid Bionic smartphone for Verizon, a powerful smartphone that should be the company's latest Android 'flagship.'

The Bionic has LTE 4G support, a dual-core 1GHz processor, a massive 4.3-inch qHD display, 512MB of RAM, an 8MP standard camera and a front-side VGA camera for video conferencing.

Furthermore, the device has HDMI-out and 'Mirror Mode' for simultaneous video streaming.

All content from the HDMI-out can be played back in 1080p Full HD.

The device also comes with remote wipe, data security and encryption capabilities, making it a strong choice for corporations, adds Motorola.

Fox and George Lucas have announced today that they will bring the highly-anticipated 'Star Wars' films to Blu-ray in September.

The movies will be available as three different sets.

'Star Wars: The Complete Saga" will include all six of the movies, along with 3 special features discs which have 30 hours of extensive special features, including deleted and alternate scenes.

The 'Prequel Trilogy' set will include Episodes I through III (The Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith) and a special features disc while the 'Original Blu-ray Trilogy' will include Episodes IV-VI (1977's A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Backand Return of the Jedi).

Amazon is selling the Complete Saga for $90 on pre-order, but the MSRP is $140. Each individual set is $70 MSRP.

Says Fox (via THR):

The Star Wars Saga is the most anticipated Blu-ray collection since the launch of the high-def format. The epic franchise pioneered sound and visual presentation in theaters and is perfectly suited to do it again in the home, with a viewing experience only possible with Blu-ray.

Skype has purchased the smartphone video streaming company Qik today, for up to $150 million.

The price is $100 million but could reach $150 million with an earnout.

Qik started 2010 with 600,000 users and ended the year with 5 million, says BI.

The service has seen new deals with Sprint, Nokia, Samsung and T-Mobile this year, and most consider Qik the premiere video streaming and uploading option on Android, which has quickly become a top smartphone OS.

Qik and Skype now share investor Marc Andreessen, the influential Netscape founder.

AT&T has announced today it will begin selling the aging iPhone 3GS for $49 with contract, slashing the price in half.

For the time being, AT&T remains the exclusive American carrier for the popular Apple smartphone.

The new deal will also be in effect for Apple stores and Apple online.

Since June, the 3GS has been selling for $99. In June the company launched the iPhone 4.

AT&T had been selling refurbished models of the 3GS at $49 for some time.

Rival carrier Verizon is expected to launch a CDMA model of the iPhone 4 next month, although neither company has confirmed the existence of such a device.

Electronic Arts (EA) has shown off the cover of the upcoming "Tiger Woods PGA Tour 12: The Masters," with its legendary namesake notably missing.

Tiger is removed from the cover of the game for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and Wii, but will remain on the PS3 Collector's Edition.

The game's cover instead focuses on the yellow flag at the Augusta National Golf Club, an iconic sign of the Master's.

EA started the series in 1999, and the game remained a top seller until last year, when Tiger's golf game took a back seat to his private life.

"Tiger Woods PGA Tour 11," released in 2010, saw 60 percent less sales than the 2009 edition of the game.

Gaming analyst Jesse Divnich gave his take on the situation (via Yahoo):

The sales issues of the Tiger Woods video game are much broader and deeper than Tiger's personal problems and has more to do with the entire golf sport struggling in 2010.

Of course, one could argue the decline in the interest of golf has to do with Tiger's extended absence and returned poor performance. But even if that was true, it says a lot about the PGA Tour and their over-reliance on one person to carry the whole league. PGA exposed itself to this risk and now is facing the consequences.

U.S. album sales declined in 2010 for the ninth time in the last ten years, and online downloads saw stalled growth, as well.

Music fans purchased 326.2 million physical CDs and digital albums in 2010, down 12.8 percent from 2009.

The figure is the lowest since 1993, the first year SoundScan began compiling the numbers.

Individual song downloads grew only 1 percent, to 1.17 billion, after 7 years of double and even triple digit growth.

The top album for the year was Eminem's latest, "Recovery," which moved 3.4 million copies. That number is higher than any album has seen since 2007.

By comparison, Eminem's blockbuster 2002 CD "Eminem Show" sold 7.6 million copies.

As a collection, the 8 albums of the "Glee" series sold 3.6 million copies.

The top selling individual song was Katy Perry's "California Gurls," at 4.4 million copies.

AT&T has announced today it plans to sell 20 smartphones in 2011 with LTE 4G compatibility, with 12 running Android.

The move likely signals that the carrier will lose its exclusivity on the Apple iPhone, which has been a top seller since 2007.

Verizon is expected to begin selling a CDMA version of the iPhone in February, although Apple has still not confirmed the move.

The Android devices will come from HTC, Motorola and Samsung. The carrier also announced it would be selling a Motorola Android tablet.

One of the Motorola devices, the dual-core Atrix 4G was announced, along with its unique ability to fit into a laptop and become, literally, the guts of the device.

AT&T's LTE network will begin rolling out in June, and should cover 75 million Americans by Christmas. National LTE will be available by the end of 2013.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has said today at CES that Xbox 360 owners will soon be able to navigate Netflix and Hulu Plus using hand gestures, via their Kinect motion control systems.

The upcoming spring update will give users a chance to use their hands to find and watch videos via the services, or even use spoken commands.

Adds Ron Forbes of Microsoft's interactive entertainment division (via Cnet): You will able to watch the services "controller-free in the living room, the biggest screen in your home."

Additionally, the Zune Marketplace will be navigable via Kinect, as well.

Moving to figures, Ballmer said there are now over 50 million Xbox 360 and 8 million Kinect units sold.